Free After the Banquet by Yukio Mishima

mention that the silk merchant had first suggested she use Sōgi’s poem.
    “As long as you know,” Noguchi read,
    “As long as you know
    I am waiting, take your time,
    Flowers of the spring.”
    Noguchi stopped untying his necktie, and for a long while stared in silence at the poem. Kazu thought that his old dried-up hand with its prominent veins was beautiful.
    “I see,” he finally said. This was his only comment. That morning at dawn a man over sixty and a fifty-year-old woman slept in the same bed.

8
    The Wedding
    A week after her return Kazu, unable to restrain her impatience to make a return present, invited her companions of the journey to dinner at the Setsugoan. The menu served that evening was as follows.
    HORS D’ OEUVRES
    Horse-tail and sesame salad Smoked carp
    Butterball-flower rolls Conger eel boiled in salt water
    Perch on rice wrapped in bamboo leaves
    SOUP
    Clear soup with grated plums, star-shaped wheat gluten,
    chives, leaf buds
    RAW FISH
    Sea bream with skin, to suggest pine bark
    Striped bass
    BROILED DISH
    Large prawns broiled in salt with raw mushrooms
    and peppers pickled in miso
    BOILED DISH
    Wakame seaweed from Naruto cooked
    with new bamboo shoots and leaf buds
    She chose a particularly large room for the occasion, though there would only be a few guests. This, she knew, would be an evening to be remembered for many years, and she intended to give it a suitable setting.
    Noguchi and Kazu had remained two more nights in Nara after their companions returned to Tokyo. They toured the various famous temples. One lovely morning they again visited the Nigatsu Hall and climbed the stone steps to the platform. The Omizutori ceremonies were virtually at an end now, and the youths who had performed so stirringly on the night of the festival, looking once again their usual selves—unsophisticated village boys—were sitting on the steps enjoying the sun. Seen from the platform, the slope below with its withered grass looked exactly like a field after a fire. Here and there patches of young sprouts spread blots of green ink, and next to them, partly burnt grass roots bathed in sunlight, displaying healthy blades.
    Few words were exchanged during the walk. Noguchi’s tone was quite unemotional, but the conversation, after shifting back and forth a while, resolved itself to a discussion of their marriage. Kazu did not let her emotions carry her away, but first listened carefully to Noguchi’s opinion, then straightforwardly expressed her own. She had no intention, no matter what happened, of giving up the Setsugoan. On the other hand, a man of Yuken Noguchi’s stature could not be expected to take up residence in a restaurant. Their married life would therefore have to be somewhat irregular. Kazu would go to Noguchi’s house every weekend, and the couple would spend two days together. On Monday mornings Kazu would return to her place of work in Koishikawa . . . Such was the fair compromise they reached.
    Thanks to the clear spring air and the calm of the ancient capital, the plans they worked out, the decisions they reached in their unhurried walks, were entirely reasonable. Kazu was astonished that such unexpected good fortune brought only a quiet happiness and no harsh agitation.
    Kazu was about to become the wife of a distinguished man. She realized now that this was the long-dreamt-of goal of a lifetime. She was born in the country, in Niigata, and after losing her parents was taken in by a relative, a restaurant owner, as his adopted daughter. She ran off to Tokyo with the first man she had . . . After many years and hardships of every kind, Kazu had attained her present position; she was convinced now that she could eventually succeed in anything, once she put her mind to it. This conviction was clearly illogical, but in one way or another it had governed her life.
    Until last autumn she had supposed that all of her hopes were already fulfilled, that her guiding conviction had outlived